Loss and Find — III – OPEN DOOM CRESCENDO

Grab hold and don’t let go. While this transience passes.
While the soul-switches flip on.
What creative expression means. At least to me.

If I attest this through the people
and things that move me most—I can maintain
why I need to actuate what I may myself give.

While I have time in this space of certainty that finds moments between faith-purgatory.
For the future self that hurts to remember at a given moment
that eventual timelessness is the temporal destination.

I’ve already written extensively on why Zack Snyder’s Justice League roots to arguably the most understatedly important modern day Hollywood narrative, both on and off-screen. I’ll do my best to climax it cause I’ll soon after be spending the next undisclosed abstraction immersed in Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

To industry-contextualize, this is a precedent set by Snyder and his army flipping the industry on its head, a long time coming from the grassroots, its ramifications to last long after and beyond this release. Against all odds we’re talking about the rich monopoly stake owners of the entertainment industry losing to the people at what stories get to be made and told. Yet these corporate stakes owners are somehow painted as the victims by so-called authorities of high taste. Why? Because Zack Snyder is Hollywood’s edgelord foil; and he’s the definition of a creator for the people, working among the highest levels of the industry as a symbol of resistance and defiance against that very industry. And past his self-aware bombast, he is notoriously nice, sincere, and giving. He’s lifted by the real-life audiences who understand there’s more to popular culture than the pop of it.

As does Snyder, they seek the Why of it—and the open-mindedness to find deeper meaning and reflections of our complicated reality within material that another populist enterprise would’ve otherwise prioritized popcorn out of.

And yes, as a filmmaker-by-technicality I think my general oxymoronic vehemence towards the film industry is pretty consistent with what I admire about Snyder’s legacy. This would be further reflected in how his work’s artistic merits are largely overshadowed in the media contrasted by his fans, quite possibly the hardcorest on the face of Earth.

Mainstream change in one sense should come by those with the power and sway within it. I say this as someone historically weary of the institutions but holding out on where redemption is found.

My thoughts on Man of Steel and Batman v Superman have been laid bare. And I head into Zack Snyder’s Justice League with a threshold of pop culture hype honestly not had since the early 2010s, more or less with Man of Steel, the last of its kind. I’m open-minded to the scenario in which I don’t even like this Justice League that much. My ultimate critical thoughts positive and/or negative do not affect what I’m writing about here. Ultimately this is not about whether Zack Snyder’s Justice League finally lives up to its hype. As a dork I’m invested in genre discourse. And the reason Snyder’s work stands out most of all regardless my range of opinions across his filmography is his willingness to dare with sincerity and compassion. To make bold moves, take bold swings in the face of a popular culture of which most others with say will in the end bet on crowdpleasantry and populist optimization.

Snyder may be the only director at his level in Hollywood to consciously provoke through the instrumenting of content contrarily meant to mass-appeal. And while haters will take this as provocation for the sake of tasteless hot takes, Snyder would be the only one willing to time and again gamble studio executives’ stockpiles of money to ask questions that piss a lot of people off. This while the undeniable rest celebrate what the work stirs and evokes, its resonance made only more powerful by the amp-shredding bombast.

To challenge is to be scrutinized. And to willingly do so when others wouldn’t—with the whole of arts & culture paying attention—is nothing short of creative courage.

That’s not even why I’m ultimately writing all this.

You needn’t me to give you reason, but I earnestly encourage you to read the Vanity Fair piece covering the story behind Justice League’s restoration. In fact, if you’re even secretly one of the preconceiving detractors, I encourage you even more so to read. As participants in creative discourse, I believe it’s important we take these bigger steps towards further empathy.

Because one way or another, as a partaker in art, this affects you, regardless how much you may or may not care. And yet as someone who is otherwise admittedly consumed in his own megamovie, there is no other film director and film of which I’ve felt this earnest a soulful and existential investment to than Snyder and his Justice League respectively. And crucially this is defined by more than the film itself. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is our modern day cinema’s monument.

It has come to define what it means to make a difference through art as community.

From my side I feel a moral will to act as gospel speaker, as I feel like the only one in my narrowly bonded world to do so. Though as this most devoted and passionate of a fandom has proven time and again, those who get it are all out there.

On the film front there just isn’t another case of an artist as high profile and influential a public figure as Snyder doing what he’s doing. Regardless your opinions of his work, it’d be at the very least ignorant to dismiss the virtue of his story and those supportive of and moved by him, by the life-saving and profound literal differences they’ve collectively made and continue to make through their platforms.

Being a high profile visionary whose works have gained notoriously passionate reactions one way or the other, Snyder invites critical discourse the same as any humble artist would. Detractors however had become predisposed—even arrogantly—to dismiss the substance behind and at the heart of the cool-to-the-sometimes-point-of-misleading stylizations.

These detractors dismiss the truths in the work, yet more immorally they dismiss the real-life humanity, compassion, and perseverance that inform it. And in this era that begs individuals [any of us with the faintest of conscientiousness] to look deeper—even previous cynics and detractors are catching up to what Snyder’s really about. This evidenced in his long-maintained empowering of and direct engagement with his fans, his candidness and open-heartedness with anyone open-minded enough to listen, and in the work itself.

This current era has put to the test who we really are—what we’re really about. With Snyder, his legacy is bigger than his filmography. The collective legacy of Snyder, his loved ones, and his fandom fulfills on as wide a pop cultural scope as it gets: what it means to love and bring change through art; through the art itself and those honored by it.

For Autumn

iii — The Legacy of Zack Snyder’s Justice League

Ultimately, before and beyond anything else, this is a father’s gift to his daughter, and the honoring of her memory; the only reason this movie’s seeing the light of day. This was always about more than a movie. This is the epitome of Art as Love. As well Art as Community by fans who rallied around mental health and suicide prevention awareness; fans who’ve enacted and continue to enact change that literally saves lives. That’s why the legacy alone of the Snyder Cut matters, and that’s why the 4-hour Snyder Cut itself is ultimately a secondary consequence within its own movement.

Anyone who doubts and scrutinizes this is part of the very demographic of so-called arts & culture connoisseur husks who want something to superficially scapegoat so they can pontificate their own elitism. These posers have no say in justifying critical analysis when they had always planned to be tone-deaf in willful ignorance. And they’ll continue betraying their own practice—of why there should even be discord in creation and subjectivity to begin with. To not only be constructively open-minded, but to be open to what’s valid in and at heart.

This world has become numb to division; somewhere along the way it became easier for some to be on edge to detract. Yet these cynics never stood a chance against the Boss edgelord—one who’s want is to deconstruct and challenge, with the hope of finding more hard-earned answers to why we bother caring for one another. Snyder dedicates and finishes his Justice League for his daughter—the questions she had asked staying with him. And as I attempt to adequately articulate my own forward creed, Autumn’s words stay with me—sculpted into my own heart.

What is my worth? What am I supposed to do? What am I about?

Art—despite loss and lost time—gets to live anew, and with it the memory of those we love most. Creative expression—underground or at the highest league—gets to still be, and more definitively: matter. Love cannot buy a work of art. It saves lives, lifts the grieving up, and gives voice. And a work of art is an act of love directly given back—from a filmmaker to a fandom; from a father to his daughter.

By and for this I’ll do my own part. I’ll remember the Why of I still doing this. I’ll remember why this is all still worth it.